Triage

American Poetry Review, The, Nov/Dec 2006 by Young, Dean

Fatally, the boy picks up a what he thought

on the occupier/insurgent fractioned

road. Fatally, the man goes out for popsicles

in the storm not for himself for his two

days later from the mudslide pulled he's

given a kind of super power, drive a nail

into his chest he won't care or notice.

The deluge greens the hills, the world

is full of wailing, concussions, unnerved

stillness, hushed discussion, then more

wailing but a birdsong still fits through

two quick notes sailing then what to do

how what needs stopping stop, speed what

needs now not? Check trickling through

the mail, joining an envelope-gush fed

into a machine that slits them open

counting. Groups of same-thinkers praying

which seems okay unless you study history

where such behavior's often preparatory

to raving, attack, more slaughter. Somehow

a bicyclist fits through, bell on handlebars.

Then mother comes home, syntax stays intact,

a lie begins to wither. The man can't fit

through barbed wire but his poems do, hidden

in his breath. Laughter fitting through at first

seems monstrous. "She'd be your age by now."

Time fitting through a fruit tree, an owl.

A string quartet of kids, a room with a

chocolate on the pillow. Outside, an un-

frozen river for those still alive.